


THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS

by penceygoth



Series: Westerberg Prep [1]
Category: Heathers (1988), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Catholic School, Catholicism, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining, angst angst angst, crossover /ish, help me tag stuff idk how bc i've never fucking posted on here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 05:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13000560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penceygoth/pseuds/penceygoth
Summary: CHAPTER ONE:Aftermath of another locker room bashing, Gerard's stuck waiting to get blamed for this only with Frank now. Repressed feelings, Catholicism, Dolly Parton, and an in-depth rosary prayer in chapter one of WESTERBERG PREP!





	THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS

**Author's Note:**

> *this will be deleted later, this is just me setting this up and so you guys can read chapter one and give me comments and (constructive) criticism.

Outside headmaster’s office for the second time that month, Gerard Way sits just inches away from his crush, thoughts racing through his head at break-neck speed. Gerard finds all the wrong words and blurts out,

“Frank, I wasn’t, you know,  _ looking … _ ” Frank rolls his eyes, and responds,

“Yeah, it’s cool, whatever,” Gerard, at a loss, doesn’t  _ want  _ Frank to think he’s gay or into him but can’t find a way to express this quickly and conversationally, so for reasons unbeknownst, he thought it smart to say,

“I’m not gay,” Frank looks at Gerard, a bit confused, and can only agree at this point because Gerard already looks like he’s about to cry. He knows how pathetic his crush on Frank is, he’s seventeen, doing eleventh grade over, and getting beat up for looking at guys in the fucking locker room; Frank’s fifteen, best friends with Gerard’s little brother, and ...well, he’s a cool loud punk and Gerard’s a nebbish fat geek.  _ He probably doesn’t even know my name, I’m just Mikey’s weird brother _ . What bothered him mostly, besides the burning hatred from his faith and ancestors, was how quickly he’d developed this enamored state. Frank and Mikey had been friends since middle school and Gerard had been on good terms, maybe even friends, with him since, Gerard could only really place the beginning of his ‘feelings’ to sophomore year, within the past two years getting more intense, ranging on the scale of ‘seriously give this guy a friend’ to ‘hardcore’ (for a Catholic school boy) sexual fantasies that make him feel dirty for even thinking them about a  _ person _ , let alone a boy; he can’t even communicate with Frank in any sort of normal way anymore. He rubs the cut below his eye and thinks about the fight. He thinks about how even though he totally had it coming to him, Frank stood up for him. Frank saw Gerard plain as day staring at him while he undressed, and he defended him. He could have kept to himself, he knew how boys tease him already, and for once he was safe. He could have just turned his head and left, he could have laughed along with them and kicked him while he was down, he could have been rightfully disgusted and let them shove his head into the locker three more times, but he wasn’t. He was…  _ okay _ with it? They called him a faggot and he hadn’t even protested, Gerard longed for that kind of bravery, enough nerve to let them call him gay and not immediately deny it. He felt terrible for getting him involved, now he’s sitting outside headmaster’s office with blood dried on his collar with him.

“Hey, Frank…” Gerard whispers as he runs his tongue against the wet and hot blood that had begun to pool above his lip again. 

“Yeah?” Gerard didn’t know how to say it. _Frank, are you gay?_ No! No fucking way! He just defended him from a locker room bashing, he can’t just _accuse_ him. _I ..I like you, Frank._ _Yeah,_ he thought as he pressed hard into his nose with the back of his hand. _That’s how you get a boy to leave you, you dumb shit, you can’t just tell every guy who doesn’t hate you that you love them._

“Uhhh….thanks ..you know… for standing up for me,” he sounds like such a  _ child _ , a dumb schoolboy with a absolutely unattainable crush. He hates this, he hates his feelings, he hates the way his voice sounds in his head when he talks to him, he  hates that he can’t tell him anything without regretting it seconds later and the words bouncing furiously around his head but it didn’t matter because thirty long seconds in that wrought painful silence, they  _ finally  _ call for ‘Gerald Whey’. He jumps from his seat and briskly makes his way into the office, never being happier to be there, even if he was called the name of a 19th century farmer. He knows that he would have quite the confession for Sunday, so he isn’t afraid to think what came to him when he stared at that painting of Jesus right behind headmaster’s head, the flooding loathing of the Church, Catholicism, priests, the way that they talked about ‘deviants’ and how he could never be a holy servant because he had those thoughts about boys, but then he realizes that they may be right, that he was the one in the wrong.

“I called your mother,” Gerard jolts hearing the headmaster’s interruption on his sacrilegious thoughts, wondering if he could hear him, and grabs the phone from his outstretched hand. 

“Ma…”

“Oh! Gerard, sweetie! Are you alright? Did you get hurt?” 

“Nah, it’s okay…” he muttered, but Ms. Way was talking way too fast.

“Gerard, this keeps happening in gym youreallyneedto...guys wouldn’t pick on you so muchifyoustoodupforyourself..the headmaster tells me the boyssaidyouwerelookingatthem? Youknowyou…” and after a minute of her blaming him for a thousand things, she takes a breath and says, “Gerard, who was the other boy this time?”

“It was just me and Frank, he...uhh… he stood up for me and got beat up too, but it’s okay, really…we went to the nurse… ”

“Mikey’s friend Frank?”  _ That was right, that’s all he is _ . Never Gerard’s boyfriend Frank, or even Gerard’s  _ friend _ Frank. Just Mikey’s friend. 

“I’ll see you later then, honey, and make sure you ice any bruises, okay? Love you,”

“Oh, yeah, love you, ma,” Gerard blushes as the receiver clicked. God, would be so much more ashamed if she had knew what he was thinking, in the locker room and in the office, no one could know what really happened. Not even fucking Mikey,  _ he  _ finds out Gerard has a crush on his best friend, he’d never hear the end of it, not to mention that he open that stupid mouth in front of their mom and just fucking spill everything; she’d crucify him. No, no one could know.

 

Apparently there’s no fucking rest in the house of Way. Gerard lays sprawled out on his bed, naked except embarrassingly pink boxer briefs, and clutching an ice pack tight on his eye as he listens to Dolly Parton once again because he’s gay and aching for love. He fights back from crying, those stupid hormonal tears, every one burns his upper cheek and worsens his feelings. The front door opens and shuts, either Mikey or his mom, whatever. Then suddenly Gerard hears Frank’s voice faintly vibrating against the door. He rolls out of bed into sweatpants because the last thing he needed from this horrendous day was Frank to see him in hot pink briefs, even if he didn’t have a crush on him. 

“NO, Frank, West Virginia is not in the South, what the fuck! Look at a map for once in your life!” Two knocks and the the door clicks open.

“Heya, Gerry..” Mikey says, Gerard slamming the door behind him and silenced Dolly’s dulcet lips, still struggling to pull his shirt on over his head.

“What’s Frank doin’ here, Mikey?” he huffs.

“Just, hangin’ out, what’s up?”

“Nothin’,” Gerard bites his lip and runs his fingers through his flat oily hair.

“Is this because of what happened earlier?” FUCK. 

“What do you know?” Gerard tone is distinctly more panicked, as if that isn’t a dead giveaway. 

“I dunno, Frank’s said nothin’,” How would he tell him without letting him  _ know _ ? He couldn’t just tell him that he’d been beat up for looking at guys  _ again _ . 

“Frank, uhh… he just … defended me, y’know... guys ...being pricks, whatever,” Mikey pushes his glasses from the tip of his nose and grins like an idiot.

“Why don’t you wanna talk to him? You got a little crush on him for saving your life?” Gerard  _ knows  _ that it’s just brotherly teasing, but his face flushes and turns as red as a tomato and Mikey’s on his ass outside the door in a second. He dared not exit, if he saw Frank, he’d feel that extreme gender hatred and probably start crying like a fucking pansy again, so instead he sits down at his desk and opens his sketchbook, quickly scribbles Frank with the bloody nose, yelling  _ fuck you, fasc _ **_SHIT_ ** _ , _ before he forgot the image and smiled remembering that amazing moment where he felt like Frank actually liked him. Drawing Frank wasn’t the most cathartic thing, but it helped him focus, you know, on important things like Lord of the Rings, D&D, X-Files, Star Wars, very high quality shit, and besides, he could hope. He sat in wait for his mother to get home with the highest anxiety of what she was going to say, but she just squeezed him so tight he could have been dying.

“I talked to that boy, Frank, sweetie,” Gerard’s eyes widen.

“About me?”  _ Oh fucking shit, that bitch, she better not have.. _

“Just, he was so nice and brave to do that for you. You need more friends,”  _ Goddammit, that bitch. _

“I have friends!” One friend. Singular. Ray and they were only friends because they did a D&D campaign in 8th grade.

“You can’t just hang out with Ray, Gerard, they’re  _ must  _ be people at Westerberg that like you!” Not… at all, no. He caught the irony in her trying to hook him up with Frank, but it mostly infuriated him, that she couldn’t even understand, that she could  _ never  _ understand, and that it was all his fault. He promised her that he would talk to Frank, a lie, that the incident  _ hadn’t  _ happened because he was looking a boy in the locker room, another lie, and that he wouldn’t not stay inside all day, third lie, but before he went to bed, he did grab his rosary and started the prayer, the daily drudge through hell and back again; Apostle’s Creed, Our Father, Hail Marys, Glory be to the Father, followed by the Sorrowful Mysteries, Our Father, Hail Marys a Glory Be, and repeated for the decades, Fatima prayer between each, finally,  _ finally _ finishing with,

 

**_HAIL, HOLY QUEEN!_ ** _ Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary! _

**_Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God._ **

_...that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. _

_ Let us pray.  _ **_O GOD_ ** _ , whose only begotten Son, by His life, death, and resurrection, has purchased for us the rewards of eternal life, grant, we beseech Thee, that meditating upon these mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we may imitate what they contain and obtain what they promise, through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen… _

 

He wants forgiveness, forgiveness for those passing thoughts of sin in the headmaster's office, that passing contempt for faith, forgiveness for looking at Frank’s naked body in the locker room and getting those overwhelming feelings afterwards. He asks Him to bless his slumber and let it not be plagued by these thoughts, these thoughts about boys or Frank, and he  _ depised _ Him.  _ He  _ plagued his sleep with these thoughts, Gerard wasn’t doing anything wrong, he just … he just liked him. _ No, fuck, what? You fucking idiot you’re rambling to God now go to bed _ . He squeezes and kisses the beads one last time before sinking into his pillow. 

_ Think happy thoughts... _


End file.
